


As The World Caves In

by hellotomyoldheart



Category: The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Angst, Developing Friendships, M/M, Nostalgia, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Recovered Memories, basically what i think would happen if kotku and theo saw each other years later, kotku deserved better, she was such a good character ruined by theo's gaze, sigh, the vegas era! but kotku!, this is also my first tgf work and it might not be good but i'm trying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:55:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22025176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellotomyoldheart/pseuds/hellotomyoldheart
Summary: “You look older,” she says, her voice undeniable. “More defined. Have you grown too?”She still looks like she used to, smoking cigarettes and tittering around in high-heeled boots with fishnets. Dresses that fall off her body, like a slip. It’s far too warm to be wearing a faux fur coat that falls to her knees. Her hair is shorter now, a bob that frames her face, bangs and sharp eyeliner. She’s taken out her face piercings but left in her ears, they dangle and move as she does. Tattoos peak from under her sleeves, one behind her ear. She looks like a cat still, sharp and slick and smooth.(Kotku and Theo see each other again after years. There are things they never knew they needed to say.)
Relationships: Other Relationship Tags to Be Added, Theodore Decker & Kotku, Theodore Decker/Boris Pavlikovsky
Comments: 6
Kudos: 60





	As The World Caves In

**Author's Note:**

> hello. this is purely self-indulgent. i am halfway through tgf book and I love kotku and wanted to show her as more human than theo did. and i think that theo and kotku could've had a really good friendship under different circumstances. please enjoy.

“You look older,” she says, her voice undeniable. “More defined. Have you grown too?”

She still looks like she used to, smoking cigarettes and tittering around in high-heeled boots with fishnets. Dresses that fall off her body, like a slip. It’s far too warm to be wearing a faux fur coat that falls to her knees. Her hair is shorter now, a bob that frames her face, bangs and sharp eyeliner. She’s taken out her face piercings but left in her ears, they dangle and move as she does. Tattoos peak from under her sleeves, one behind her ear. She looks like a cat still, sharp and slick and smooth. 

I smile and look at the ground, stuff my hands in my pockets. I know what she means. Kotku, the girl of Boris’ desire and affection and the person I didn’t want anything to do with, was always rather straight forward with me. She looks nice, I wanna say. Pretty. 

Pippa and Boris are inside, getting ready for dinner. I just wanted a cigarette but then she was there, in the street, like fate. Like the past is always chasing me. 

“How is he?” Kotku asks, genuinely curious. “I haven’t seen him in… a while.”

I nod. “He’s alright. Inside, if you’d like to see him.”

She shakes her head and laughs, “no need to make you jealous.”

I am about to protest when I realize I should ask how she is doing. How has she been? Is she married, happy, does she have kids? She looks rich and famous, she looks like she walked out of a nineties movie premiere. 

“How are you?” I ask, leaning against the wall with her. “Has life been kind to you?”

She blows out some smoke from the corner of her mouth, I inhale it. I see what Boris saw in her, she was sexy. She called attention. She was alluring. You hung onto her every word. Boris once said that Kotku would walk out of a room and everything in the room would follow.  _ I swear even the couches would follow. _

“Life is not kind to anyone,” she answers. And it strikes me on how human she is. She was never a villain, she was just a girl who liked the boy I loved. She was never anything but young and girlish. She was not a villain, she was not a hero, she was just a girl. Boris was always telling me good things about her-  _ Potter, you will never believe  _ and  _ she is just- _ but I always ignored him. She was never anything to me but a thief. It’s harder now, to hate her. I don’t even want to. “Has life been kind to you? Doesn’t look it. You look tired. But you look in love. Came alive when I mentioned him.”

I shrug, she hands me the cigarette. I take it. There’s lipgloss on the butt.

“I’m fine,” she continues. “I left Vegas at nineteen. I haven’t been back. I got married, got divorced. I’m a tattoo artist now, good money, good people. And... life has been life.”

“I’m sorry,” I say to her after a pause, everything around us has seemed to freeze. Like we were the only ones there. The lights froze between yellow and red, a couple making out against a brick wall across the street from us froze mid-kiss, the earth stopped spinning. “For how I treated you. It was wrong and I was young and just. I’m sorry.”

She seems to consider this for a moment before nodding, “I know.”

“You really should come in and say hello.”

Kotku, who probably goes by something else now but I can only see her as this teenager who I hated and Boris adored, who had orange streaks in her hair and dark makeup lining her eyes, who ate very little and sent me her sorrow when my father died even though we weren’t fond of each other. Kotku nods and then sniffles as if she might cry, and when I look at her- her eyes are lined with tears. 

“I know,” she replies watery. “He’ll be out soon. For you. He always was looking for you, you know. At school, at parties, in the street. He was always scared he’d go to your house and find you dead at the bottom of your swimming pool.  _ Dead!  _ He’d panic.  _ Dead!  _ I would’ve laughed but I knew he was serious. I was scared too. You may have hated me and I didn’t like you either, but I never wanted you… dead. I wanted you alive because he wanted you alive.”

After a few moments, she looks at me and says something that burns me to the core.

“He may have loved me but never like he loved you.”

Her voice sounds sadder, lost in the past, nostalgic. Kotku wasn’t bitter, she was just sad. I wish I would’ve known better. 

“You’re not gonna come inside are you?”

“I don’t know if I can,” she says softly, like admitting a dark secret. “It feels wrong. Like I am bringing a wave of unresolved conflict.”

I sigh, “he would want to see you. You could meet Pippa. She’d love you. I wouldn’t forgive myself if you didn’t come in and say hello to him. He wouldn’t forgive me.”

“Theo,” she says shortly. “I can’t.”

“You should.”

“That doesn’t mean I can.”

I know what she means. I wish I didn’t.

“I ever tell you how once I saved your ass?” Kotku starts. We both know she hadn’t. “I was looking for him, hadn’t seen him in a few days. Thought he might be at your house. So I knocked on your door and I just heard howling. Like this soul shattering howling, something you'd hear in a horror movie. It was awful. I walked in and you were passed out in the bathroom, absolutely wasted. Your lips were blue. I was so scared you were dead I stood in the doorway for a few moments just looking at you. He called you pretty sometimes, and I understood why at that moment.”

She takes a deep breath, I listen.

“Anyway, I got you up. I made you drink water and take medicine and rubbed your back as you threw up into the toilet. You were so out of it I was worried to leave you alone so I waited. I remember you needed a haircut and you had freckles all over your face. You looked older and younger than you were all at once. You were half asleep on the bathroom floor with a damp washrag on your forehead and wearing a shirt I had found because your other one was covered in vomit. You said something though. You looked at me with these earnest eyes and said  _ I’m just mad _ ,” Kotku slows to a stop and kicks the ground with the toe of her heeled boot. “I asked why. You said life.  _ Life is just making me pissed off. And I wanna go home. _ ”

I wonder when this was, what night and where he was. What was I wasted on? How long had I been asleep on the floor? Would I have been dead if Kotku didn’t find me? I have so many questions but Kotku continues. 

“Then your dad died and you ran to New York and I thought  _ oh. He’s going home. But not really _ ,” she reaches for the cigarette. “I don’t know what it’s like to lose a mother but I know what it’s like to lose something you thought you’d never lose. I didn’t like you, Theo, but I had a soft spot for you. I wanted you happy.”

I wish I could say the same for her. I never thought of her with emotions. Only as a thing that took from me.

“You ever think about those days?” she questions, almost timidly. She’s lighting another cigarette. I wonder if she always smokes like this or if it’s just nerves. 

“I used to try to avoid anything like that, I tried to only think about before,” I answer. “But now? God, now I think about it nearly every day... do you?”

She takes a drag of her cigarette and looks at the couple that was making out but is now just leaning against the brick wall, legs in front of them, talking. Kotku shrugs. “All the time.”

"I wish it would've been different," She admits as she hands me the cigarette. "A lot different."

"It could've been," I respond, she shakes her head, her earings clank against the side of her neck. 

"No. It was always gonna be how it was," she looks at me, smiles slightly. "Are you gonna invite me in for a drink or not?"

I grin as I put out the cigarette. Her heels click against the concrete steps. 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you all for reading! kudos and comments warm my heart!
> 
> [my tumblr!](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/hellotomyoldheart)


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